Pre-Trip - My Decision to Travel

Alright guys - this is my first Blog entry for my trip to Europe!!
{Just a Fair Forewarning - I never have considered my self the best writer or anything so please excuse any tangents I get on as well as any grammatical errors - Heck I'm an Audio Engineer - Not an English Major}

I just set this up today and I'm hoping to be using this a lot while in Europe, but I'm not quite sure about it because I really have never steadily blogged before (besides when it was required for one of the film classes I took at Huntington but that's besides the point). So yea - This is the beginning of what is going to be an amazing trip.

I am going with a good friend of mine that I met at Huntington University as a Freshman, Nathan Hunt. We both went to Huntington our first year of college and then both promptly left our second. I transferred to Columbia college in Chicago and he transferred to George Fox in Oregon. On one of his trips back to go visit some friends at HU, partway through our sophmore year, we were able to meet up and we grabed some food. Randomly during that time I brought up how I thought it would be awesome to travel Europe after I was done with College, then sarcastically proceded to ask him if he would be interested in going. Of course he said yes, and at that point in time we left it at that.

However at the beginning of the Fall Semester 2009 we both realized that we were going to be graduating early and be officially done at the end of that semester. Thats when we actually started tossing the Idea around of - "Hey, we actually could do this!"

My initial concerns were mainly work related. at that point in time I was still working for Willow Creek Community Church - the DuPage Campus as their Audio/Systems Engineer. At the beginning of the semester I was really enjoying what I was doing, however, part way through the semester my hours got cut, which pretty much caused them to cut the part I liked doing most, the systems engineering work. Then toward the middle of the year it became apparent that sometime in the near future the church would no longer have the budget to keep me on staff. Which I started to realize as the end of the year came around - I really was ready to move on from Willow anyways. Not being able to do the system engineering work that I wanted to really hurt my passion to work for the church. I basically was mixing the weekend service each weekend and that was it. I was happy about that part because it trained my ear as well as helped my mixing technique - but I still loved the systems work to much and not having that was slowly causing me to burn out.

So I realized that partway through the semester that THIS was the time to take a trip - if any. My Schoolwork was ending, my Work was closing off and Freelance work was down because it was during slow season and with the amount I worked while in college between Willow and my freelance work I had enough saved up to be able to do this trip. So it all seemed to fit into place - and in reality, I needed a break.

The last 2.5 years have been crazy for me. At one point I was working 55 hours/week at Willow (hourly) and also taking 18 credit hours. It was exhausting. And even though I had an opportunity to start an internship right out of college I basically told myself "If I don't take a break now - when will I?"

So that is how I arrived at the decision to take this trip! I think its much needed and I really am looking forward to traveling seeing other countries, getting out of the states and growing as a person from this experience.